Page:The council of seven.djvu/71

 but with that implacable will enfolding her she began to seem a helpless fly in the toils of an enormous spider.

"Take time for thought." He recurred yet again to his theme with the zest of one who knows his own skill and loves its exercise. "The strongest and the wisest of us are liable to moments of weakness in which we may easily come to grief. I'm twice your age and that's my excuse for prosing. But don't throw away the substance for the shadow; don't go back on your whole life for the sake of a heroic gesture. The control of the Woman's News, with a combined minimum sale here and in the United States of five million copies a week, is going to be the prize of your profession. Try to realize what such a chance means before you sacrifice it to a chimera."

"John Endor is no chimera," Helen mustered the wit to reply. "He is a great man. You know that as well as I do."

Again he looked at her in the way that had the power of disconcerting everybody.

"A great man ab avo shall we say? But I'm going to be brutally frank." A brief pause was well timed. "He can't stay the course; he's geared too high."

"How is it possible to know that?" said Helen valiantly.

The Colossus laughed. Slowly his eyes unhooded themselves. She felt them strike like the fangs of a cobra. "Dear fellow!" A curious lisp entered that